1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of producing a fiber containing carbon as a major component, a method of producing an electron-emitting device using the fiber, a method of producing an electron source having a plurality of the electron emitting devices arranged in an array configuration, and a method of producing an image display device comprising the electron source.
2. Description of the Related Art
One type of cold cathode device which has been given attention is the field-emission type (FE type) of electron emitting device which emits electrons from the surface of a material utilizing the known tunnel effect. As an example of the FE type cold cathode, at least one having a cone or quardrangular pyramid shape such as the FE cold cathode disclosed in the publication entitled “physical properties of thin-film field emission cathodes with molybdenum cones”, J. Appl. Phys., 47, 5248 (1976), by Spindt, or the like, has been known (hereinafter, referred to as the Spindt type).
In recent years, much attention also has been given to FE type cold cathodes using carbon nanotubes as emitter materials thereof. With regard to methods of producing electron emission devices using carbon nanotubes, a method of placing previously-produced carbon nanotubes into a paste material or the like, and arranging them into predetermined positions in array configuration is known (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-043792; hereinafter, this method is referred to as an indirect arraying method), as is a method of arranging a metallic catalyst in desired positions in an array on a substrate, and selectively growing carbon nanofibers in areas having the metallic catalyst arrayed therein by a chemical vapor deposition method (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-057934; hereinafter, this method is referred to as a direct arraying method).